Every Monday through Friday, I go to work at a restaurant. As part of my job, I taste the food before every shift to make sure it tastes like it always does. The smell of the food fills the whole restaurant, especially when fresh baked brownies come out of the oven. At about 11:00, I see customers start filing into the restaurant, and when they get up to the counter, I touch their credit cards. I hear music playing on the radio, and a gentle roar of businessmen talking about their agendas for the day. These are just a few of the ways my senses are engaged throughout each workday.
Then, there are times when I get behind. I get frustrated. Or, somebody calls in or doesn't show up, and so feel the need to step it up and carry more weight than I'm used to carrying. Sometimes, I really get into the music that's playing, and while I'm opening up the restaurant I feel compelled to get on a table and dance. Other times, I feel relieved when the restaurant empties out, and I give my coworker a high-five because we feel like we've survived another lunch rush. I've planted some vegetables in front of the restaurant, so every morning I water them. Each time I go out there, I see growth. They are different than they were the day before, and way different than a week ago.
The top paragraph represents what is true. The second paragraph represents something else.
While both sets of experience make up each day of my existence, one is very easy to explain but the other not so much. One set of experiences is obvious to the naked eye and the other is invisible to the naked eye. One set is connected to the brain. The other is connected to . . .
If there's one thing I've learned about the relationship between the Pharisees and Jesus, it's this: the Pharisees have no problem accepting what Jesus does as truth. At least one of their senses are engaged during each of these actions of Jesus. It's what Jesus says that is not obvious to the Jews, and not engaging to the senses. It's not palatable, not pleasing to the eyes or nose. It's something else.
I completely understand how they can get so offended when Jesus says things like:
I and my Father are one. I am the Son of God. I do what my Father does. My sheep recognize my voice. You are not my sheep. My Father sent me here.
They demand that he tell them who he really is, where he really comes from. The problem is that Jesus has told them. They just don't believe him. They want his claims to fit inside the box of their sensual experience.
When I get angry, or sad, or feel compelled to do a strip tease while listening to Coldplay, or feel a sense of amazement when I see jalapenos begin growing, what is going on exactly?
I have this problem with control. When things don't go my way at work (or life), I get angry. If I don't do something about it, it will just keep growing. What is this? For some reason, if I don't do something, the anger will not go away on its own. To combat growing anger and frustration, I used to go to the freezer, slam the door shut, and scream at the top of my lungs much like a three month old baby who doesn't get her way.
Most of the time, however, I retreat outside. I stand still. I let my mind quiet down. I talk to the air. I speak into space. I say things like "Please direct my thinking. Please divorce my thinking from self-pity, dishonest, and self-seeking motives." What happens is my mind gets even more still. My heartbeat slows down. I regain a sense of purpose. My anger subsides. I walk back into the restaurant.
I will argue that if I were left only to what I can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear, I would either live in complete denial or complete ignorance.
The truth is that there is a something else going on. There is something else behind the senses, something dynamic and evolving.
Recently, one of my coworkers commented on my blog. She said, "You're really matured in your writing." That something has matured, or grown, or evolved.
Maybe the best thing we can do as a human race is accept that there are two shows going on here. There is the truth of our senses, and then there is . . . something else. The something else causes us to use words like:
compels, feels, matures, amazed, awestruck, wonder, beautiful, belief.
The problem the Pharisees have with Jesus isn't that he hasn't done something true, but that he keeps saying stuff that they can't grasp with their senses. Jesus uses one word constantly that implies suspending the senses - believe.
I think one of the biggest problems we have with this word is we give try to give it characteristics it was never supposed to have. We somehow think that in order to believe we have to see proof, or taste it's goodness, or hear its crescendo. All we have to do to believe is suspend our senses and let that something else exist the way it was created to exist.
We may just find that when we stop expecting our beliefs to create sight, our faith to construct sound, and our theologies to develop taste, believing is an essential part of who we are. We find that God was simply right there the whole time in that realm of otherness.
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